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If your considering attending Maharishi University of Management (MUM), you’ll want to familiarize yourself with the flavor of activity which has resulted over the years in Fairfield Iowa and the world over. While you can Google “Maharishi University of Management” to encounter majority sponsored results which have bias in favor of the university, more complex searches involving key players in the university’s history glean deeper more granular results reflecting a distinct pattern of core observations.

SUICIDE IN FAIRFIELD: IOWA TOWN STRUGGLES WITH MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS. Since mid-2008 through Sept. 2014, 20 people have died by suicide in the greater Fairfield area, according to the county medical examiner. Four of the suicides have occurred since May of this 2014.

The killing of one student by another has threatened the future of not only what Maharishi disciples call ‘a safe, harmonious campus’, but also undermines the credibility of the one-time guru of the Beatles and spiritual leader to Hollywood celebrities including film-maker David Lynch and actress Heather Graham.

Bhopal: Two motorcycle-borne youths threw acid at the woman who had lodged rape case against Girish Var ma, chancellor Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Vedic Vishwavidyalaya. The woman escaped unhurt with just minor burns as the bottle grazed past her, with a few drops falling on her feet.

Rekha Basu writes: The first time most of us learned hundreds of Hindu Indian priests have been living in Iowa for seven years to advance world peace was after up to 80 of them shook, vandalized and threw rocks at a sheriff’s truck.

Deone Benninghoven, Seattle, Wash writes: The Rekha Basu column about the Indian nationals in Fairfield [“Peacemakers not at Peace,” March 23] provided valuable insight into a closed system of possible human rights’ violations and extreme exploitation.

Erin Jordan writes: Each pandit is paid a $200 monthly stipend, with $150 going directly to the pandit’s family in India. Living expenses are covered and pandits can earn bonuses for longevity or good behavior, Goldstein said.

VEDIC CITY, IOWA — On Wednesday morning, KTVO received a statement from Bill Goldstein the representative of the sponsoring organization, Global Country of World Peace, regarding the incident that occured in Vedic City, Iowa last week.

NARAYAN LAKSHMAN writes: The Indian Consul General in Chicago has said no complaints or information has been received either from the Iowa-based Maharishi Vedic City, or from any one of the 130 “Vedic pandits” or religious scholars brought here from India for studies and training. The pandits are said to have gone “missing” in the last seven months.

NARAYAN LAKSHMAN writes: The Iowa-based institutions of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi have confirmed that at least 130 Indian “Vedic pandits” have gone missing in recent years after arriving in the U.S. to pursue programmes of religious learning.

The Iowa-based institutions of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi have said about only five per cent of the 2,600 vedic pandits, who were brought to the US from north Indian villages, have gone missing in recent years.

While a media report has claimed that as many as 163 Vedic pandits, who were brought to the US from north Indian villages, have disappeared from the Maharishi Vedic City in Iowa during the past year, the institute’s management has denied any wrongdoing

In a shocking revelation, as many as 163 Indians, most of them brought to the US as teenagers from villages in northern India to be trained into Vedic Pandits by two institutions set up by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi of transcendental meditation fame, appear to have gone missing over the last 12 months.

Pam Credille, Managing Editor writes: Six Pandits returned to India following the riot on their campus on March 11, 2014. The riot was a result of a Pandit leader being removed from campus with the help of the Jefferson County Sheriff

BILL GOLDSTEIN’s explaination of the mayhem in the Vedic City Pandit Compound. Bill is counsel to the Global Country of World Peace, the sponsor of the Pandit project. He also is dean of global development at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield.

Paul Raeburn writes: In 2011, a study funded by the National Institutes of Health claimed to find that Transcendental Meditation could reduce risk of death, heart attack, and stroke in African-Americans with heart disease, according to a press release. The study had a lovely pedigree: It was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and a version of it had been presented at the annual scientific sessions of the American Heart Association.

John Horgan writes: In response to my last post, which proposed that Transcendental Meditation and other cults might be exploiting the placebo effect, some readers cited studies supposedly showing that TM has therapeutic benefits. Well, sure. There are lots of studies showing that lots of forms of meditation can yield lots of benefits.

John Horgan writes: The question is, why do cults work? Why do they make adherents feel better? The obvious (to me) answer is that they harness the placebo effect, the tendency of our belief that something will benefit us to be self-fulfilling.

Tim Barlass writes: Fred Travis of the Maharishi University of Management in Iowa has won a $2.4 million grant from the US Department of Defence for research on the use of meditation to help veterans from the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts cope with stress.

Larry Husten writes: In his response Schneider tries to skate away from the inevitable questions raised about this paper when Archives of Internal Medicine chose to withdraw the paper only 12 minutes before its scheduled publication time.

Larry Huston writes: Last year, in what may have been an unprecedented action, a paper on the effects of Transcendental Mediation (TM) in African Americans was withdrawn by the editors only 12 minutes before the paper’s scheduled publication in Archives of Internal Medicine

A journal said today that it was pulling a paper linking transcendental meditation to lowered rates of death from heart attack and stroke after its authors provided additional data “less than 24 hours” before the article had been slated to be published online.

Swami Balendu writes: I mentioned a few examples for people who are definitely not grounded and told the group that there are many yogis who are actually trying to fly. They believe this would in some strange way bring peace to this earth. The movement that created and spreads this theory was founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Indira Gilbert writes: Transcendental Meditation (TM) is being introduced in many schools in South Africa (and abroad) under the name of CBE (consciousness-based education) claiming that it assists the learner to concentrate and subsequently produce improved academic results. Not only is its religious nature withheld from those it is planned to recruit – its religious nature is actually denied.

I’ve been seeing a Facebook ad recently that advertises a MS in Computer Science in the US. I idly clicked on it, and as I read, I started thinking that I’ve hit on a gold mine. Well, when something looks too good to be true, it usually is. The ad led to a webpage that advertised a two year Masters in Computer Science from Maharishi University of Management. Red Flag one – what kind of a name is that for a US college?

Dough writes: The diagnosis is in: I have a malignant negativity, a “negative world view”, that prevents me from accepting the unique universal healing properties of Transcendental Meditation™ [TM]. My problem has been recognised by some of the top minds at Maharishi University (TM’s university in Fairfield, Iowa) who have expressed a willingness to take legal action against my writings so as to quarantine this ugly contagion – this hideous negativity that has deformed my critical thinking to the point in which it I can no longer recognise established scientific facts. According to TM™

John Weldon writes: The Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement routinely claims scientific validation for the benefits of its meditation program. It alleges that some 500 studies, including those from leading universities, have confirmed the positive benefits of TM for individuals and society. TM promoters, for example, often speak of the “Maharishi Effect,” which they say improves the quality of life in many locations by reducing crime and conflict while increasing various collective health benefits.

Bronte Baxter writes: What I expected to see when I came back to the Fairfield scene after 20 years away from Transcendental Meditation was a group of mainstay meditators true-blue to Maharishi and a group of robust dissenters, whose minds questioned everything they learned from their guru days. Instead, I found the true-blue meditators, but not the kind of dissenters I anticipated. I encountered people who had left the TM movement but hadn’t substantially changed their belief system.

This file is a legal threat sent to Examiner.com from Maharishi University (Transcendental Meditation) General Counsel William Goldstein in an effort to remove an article critical of the David Lynch Foundation’s efforts to bring Transcendental Meditation (TM) into public schools

mumbull, a critical look at the Maharishi University of Management and other enterprises of the Transcendental Meditation movement, is published by Bob Brigante, a satisfied TM customer and fan of Maharishi since 1968.

Member asks the forum: Recently, I applied to Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa. The college seems like a dream come true school because it incorporates consciousness and transcendental meditation in the classroom. My friend recently got accepted there but after visiting the school he has become very uncertatin about it.

Jody Radzik writes: While the Maharishi is a kind of genius in the marketing of spirituality, what he’s teaching can be found in the most basic of Vedic-based ideologies. Save your money and find a vipassana retreat. While not specifically Vedic-based, they are free of cost (donation optional) and certainly every bit as effective as what the money-grubbing TMers are teaching

Lily Koppel writes on the expansion of the TM Movement with a focus on the university in Fairfield Iowa: In the 1960′s, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi — called the giggling guru by the press — gained a measure of celebrity for promoting his mantra-repetition technique of Transcendental Meditation around the world and for serving a brief stint as spiritual adviser to the Beatles.

Member asks the forum: Is anyone here from Fairfield, IA or know anything about the Maharishi University of Management? I was looking through their website at http://www.mum.edu/ and it looks like a cool school.

David Sunfellow writes: If you’re like me, you’ve probably received piles of email about John Hagelin, the Natural Law/Reform Party candidate for U.S. President. On the surface, his positive, eco-friendly, spiritually-oriented focus sounds both hopeful and enlightened.

The plaintiff, World Teacher Seminar, Inc., brings this original certiorari action to challenge an order requiring it to indemnify Maharishi International University for attorney fees of $62,090 allegedly incurred in curbing violations by plaintiff of a consent decree entered in prior litigation between the parties. That lawsuit was expanded when nine students of Maharishi International University intervened seeking relief from the University’s efforts to expel them for their contacts with plaintiff.

A skeptical — yet accurate — description of the confusion and disorientation that commonly falls in wake of proponents of the Transcendental Meditation movement such as Maharishi University of Management.

Transcendental Meditation itself is an instance of mantra yoga. The student mentally repeats a series of Sanskrit words for a minimum of twenty minutes every morning and evening. (Such mantras are reportedly selected on the basis of the student’s age. And they don’t come cheaply.)

There is a wall that you will hit in the \"movement\" that poses as a secular non-profit organization to bring heaven on earth. It will damage your third eye forever because you won't be able to tell what is reality and what is dissonance from the reality. This the experience of non-duality with a crack. And you are not part of the crack or th […]

My kid went to the Maharishi School in Melbourne, Australia. We chose the school because we wanted a gentle, nurturing environment with high academic standards and individualised teaching (it is a really small school). What we got is outdated, poor quality teaching and a lot of cultish behaviour from staff and management who unthinkingly do what senior manag […]

Maharishi would manipulate sexual encounters with his followers, this is well documented. Old Ru's in Fairfield try to follow his example. Students get raped and it gets swept under the rug. They inspire suicide after suicide after suicide. They are a death cult, criminals, murderers and they should be held accountable for the actions in a court of law.

Key Websites

David Wants to Fly is a 2010 German documentary film that follows its director, Berlin-based, film school graduate David Sieveking, as he interacts with his film hero David Lynch, and explores the Transcendental Meditation movement.

It's that time again. Every few years, another book selling Transcendental Meditation, written by a nearly life-long TM teacher or satisfied customer, lands on the store shelves, with the backing of a major publisher. The latest is "Strength in Stillness," written by David Lynch Foundation executive director Bob Roth as part of the Foundation […]

There was, or at least seemed to be, a time, before Mahesh went totally crackers with his narcissistic obsession for fame and fortune, that TM had a side that recognized the personal worth of those who got involved. Individual personal worth wasn't particularly marketable, however (or Mahesh couldn't bother to focus on that kind of thing) and so, i […]

Here's an excerpt from a book written by a "meditation mentor" in Singapore. My posting of this excerpt is not to endorse any system of meditation or any religious tradition. It does serve as a rather thorough exploration of the downsides of meditation, and why it may not be recommended for a lot of people.REAL DANGERS OF MEDITATION[Abridged f […]

TM: religion, cult, science? Sure, why not! It's how you play the game, plain and simple. An old-time friend wanted to know why I, such a devoted, committed, true-believer (in the old days), quit TM. When I said I began to feel that I was living a lie, he declared a whiff of bovine excrement. He was right.It was so much more than that. But the words tha […]

This article appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Most of us might well see some less than rigorous search for facts. Following this article is a former TM teacher's response. ←↕→ Bob Roth, chief executive of the David Lynch Foundation, teaches transcendental meditation to a range of students, from elementary-school children to CEOs by Alexandra Wolfe h […]

I have some questions which I am hoping some of my fellow old-timers can help supplement my memory about TM teaching practices in the old days of the 1970’s. Beyond what is in the checking notes, did TM teachers receive any training or instruction about handling situations where meditators were experiencing significant physical or psychological problems? W […]

I learned TM in 1968. I spent two years as one of Mahesh's secretaries. Then, I abandoned TM/Mahesh in 1976 (or thereabouts). I learned a lot and came away not as damaged as many I knew and observed. So between then and now, I have given my life-experience some consideration.Yes, to begin, I am well aware that many claimed and a few demonstrated that TM […]